Trump Blamed Biden for Stock Market Crash, But Decided It Didn't Matter When He Broke It Himself

Trump has long boasted about the market's success during his first term as president. But after the stock crash, which saw the S&P 500 index suffer its worst day since last September, his rhetoric has changed, writes NBC News.

Photo: Oksana Smyshliaeva | Dreamstime.com

When President Donald Trump wanted to highlight the success of his first term last month, he turned to the stock market.
“I was very proud to hand over a country where the stock market was higher than it was before the pandemic,” he told Fox News on Feb. 9. “It was an incredible accomplishment.”

He promised that this trend would continue during his second term as president.

"The stock market is going to be great," he said at an investor conference on Feb. 19.

On the subject: What Problems Is Trump Trying to Solve with Tariffs, and Why It Threatens an Economic Crisis

But as stocks began to fall sharply last week on concerns that Trump's tariff policies would push the US into recession, his rhetoric changed.

“You can’t just look at the stock market,” Trump said in an interview that aired March 9 on Fox News. “Take China, for example, where they have a 100-year horizon. We have a quarter. We look at quarterly reports.”

Stocks fell further on March 10, erasing all gains since Trump’s election. The S&P 500 suffered its worst day since September, and tech stocks suffered the biggest losses, with the Nasdaq posting its biggest one-day drop since 2022, wiping out $1 trillion in market value.

None of Trump's more than two dozen posts on his social media platform, Truth Social, on March 10 mentioned the market crash. A White House spokesman downplayed the market swings in a statement to reporters.

“Since President Trump’s election, industry leaders have responded to his ‘America First’ economic agenda of tariffs, deregulation, and American energy growth by committing trillions of dollars in investment that will create thousands of new jobs,” White House press secretary Kush Desai said. “President Trump delivered historic increases in jobs, wages, and investment in his first term and is poised to do so again in his second.”

The White House cited several polls showing rising confidence among business leaders, though those surveys were conducted before Trump imposed trade tariffs on Canada and Mexico.

During his first term, Trump frequently used the stock market as a proxy for the state of his presidency, posting messages like, “The stock market is at an all-time high. These things don’t just happen!” At rallies, he often cited the market’s rise and talked about workers thanking him for making them richer as their investment portfolios grew.

While the stock market has seen ups and downs during Trump's tenure as the 45th president, including a sharp decline at the start of the pandemic, it has generally moved higher, with the S&P 500 up nearly 70%. That rally has continued under Joe Biden's presidency. Trump has claimed otherwise, though.

“Stock markets are collapsing, unemployment is terrible,” he wrote in August 2024, arguing that it was all the fault of “the most incompetent leader” in history.

On the eve of his inauguration, with the S&P 500 up about 3% since the election, the 47th president called that gain, along with other economic improvements, the “Trump effect.”
“I hate to say it because I don’t want to sound overconfident, but I will say it: Everyone calls it the Trump effect. You are the effect,” he told a rally of his supporters. “Since the election, the stock market has soared and small business optimism has broken records, jumping 41 points to a 39-year high. Bitcoin is breaking records one after another.”

But as Trump’s economic policies began to be implemented in the first 50 days of his second presidency, investor optimism faded. The market slide accelerated last week when Trump made good on his threat to impose 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, the United States’ two closest trading partners, and an additional 10 percent levy on imports from China.

While Trump dropped some tariffs on Canada and Mexico days later, many goods remained under levy, and he reiterated that he would impose additional levies in April. On March 11, China imposed retaliatory tariffs on various U.S. agricultural products, and Ontario's premier announced that the province would raise energy taxes on 1,5 million Americans by 25%.

U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports are set to take effect this week, pushing up prices for some American producers.

“The fundamentals are really strong. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of uncertainty right now that’s impacting boardrooms and investors,” said Peter Orszag, CEO of investment bank Lazard and a former Obama administration chief budget official. “People can understand the tensions with China. But Canada, Mexico and Europe — that’s not clear.”

Trump has not ruled out the possibility that the tariffs will cause economic hardship. He recently warned that there would be a “transition period” and “a little bit of a shock.”

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the economy will have to go through a "detox" period if government stimulus is withdrawn, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said tariffs will push up prices on some goods, although they won't cause overall inflation.

On March 10, Trump reiterated his position on product taxes while speaking to reporters while returning to Washington after a weekend at his home in Palm Beach, Florida.
"I think tariffs are the best thing we've ever done," Trump said. "They're going to make our country rich again."

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